


Unhinged From Gravity's Pull

by InkwellSelkie



Series: The Life and Times of Captain Ghafa [1]
Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Gen, Original Male Character(s) - Freeform, Post-Canon, but like super light angst, inej's endeavors at sea, original characters that only exist for an outsider pov, pirate inej
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-18
Updated: 2018-08-18
Packaged: 2019-06-29 01:53:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15719514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InkwellSelkie/pseuds/InkwellSelkie
Summary: "We can sink her lads!"But they couldn't sink her. No one could.Her being The Wraith, the deadliest ship on the sea.(A brief example of the daily life and exploits of one Captain Inej Ghafa)





	Unhinged From Gravity's Pull

**Author's Note:**

> There are far too many fics of Inej returning to Ketterdam after her mission at sea and not enough chronicling her actual mission at sea, so I took it upon myself to remedy this error. Enjoy!

Salt spray and June showers lashed furiously against the deck of the Amaryllis. Elkir wiped water from his face with an already soaked sleeve as he heaved a cannonball into the cannons waiting maw.

"We've got this boys!" cried the captain, fear staining his voice like fine wine on cotton despite his brave words. "C'mon! Step lively! Come along! We can sink her!" 

But they couldn't sink her.  
Nobody could.

Her being the Wraith, the deadliest ship on the sea. She was hard to classify; pirate? Privateer? No, the Wraith's sailors obeyed no law but gravity, bound only by their captain's morals.

Elkir had heard the story of the Wraith back on Kerch, spread thin in bits and pieces over months in backwater taverns with washed-up sailors grungier than the glasses they slugged. A young Suli woman ran the small vessel they said. A liberator of stolen people they called her. She hunted slavers, pirates, even high ranking government ships if they held -a pause here, as if uneasy to reveal a dirty secret-...unethical cargo. Some spoke in reverent tones, as if describing a distant idol. Some spoke in voices of annoyance, the way men speak of fussing wives. Some spoke through slashed lips or displayed a hand missing two fingers. 

Most on land respected the Wraith, either for her mission or her brutality.

For no one had ever reached land unscathed if her captain set her sights on them.

On the Amaryllis, it was different. The captain claimed the Wraith had taken much from him, spat the name like venom. Elkir had briefly wondered why he would hate such a respected vessel, then went about his duties. He'd worked hard for this employment and intended to keep it mind you.

Now, he wondered twice as hard, uniform soaked and breath shaky as he and Mabo fired the cannons at the ship as it rapidly advanced on their own, sleek and menacing, it's sails bearing the recognisable insignia of a skeleton bust draped in dark silks like a grotesque flag against the veil of dark clouds.  
"You really think we'll be the ones to finally take 'er down?" he murmured, half joking.  
Mabo did not respond.  
Elkir chose not to imagine what he thought.

The Wraith came into clearer view amid sheets of rain. Her decks were afroth with activity, sailors in mostly dark clothing running to and fro with vigour, a lean figure at the wheel calling orders in clear, satin-smooth Kerch. 

They were so close, so impossibly close!  
"Don't let them board the ship!" screeched the captain of the Amaryllis, spittle flying from his wrinkled lips.

Mabo and Elkir launched another cannonball.  
The shot missed by inches.

Suddenly, the figure at the helm sprang into motion, barking orders as they darted about. A rope uncoiled from somewhere on the deck and the sailors watched in awe and terror as the figure reared up, legs bent like springs, and lept into the air.

Surely, nobody could make that jump!

They hovered for an unnaturally long moment there, fabric swinging around them like crows feathers, body lithe and seemingly unhinged from gravity's pull. An angelic figure amid the violent precipitation.

The next moment, before anyone had time to blink, they were there on the deck, tying the rope to the rail.

The rest of the crew let out a whoop and began to crawl, walk, or leap across the rope spanning the gap between ships with varying degrees of elegance, none quite rivaling the first.

That first figure stood shorter than several among the Wraith's sailors and most of the Amaryllis', but strode up to the Captain without a second thought, whipping off their hood to reveal an angular, dusky bronze face and spice-dark eyes full of the fury of a tidal wave.

Captain Ghafa.

It was at this moment that Elkir knew, he was dead meat.

"Good evening," she said, anything but a friendly greeting. "I am aware you are transporting a number of kidnapped women. You are to turn them over to me with minimal violence at once."

Their captain crossed his arms defiantly.  
"I don't know anything about such a thing, lassy." he sneered. 

Captain Ghafa raised a brow, water dripping down her sharp face.

"Well in that case, allow me to rephrase my demand." she sighed. 

Before the captain could move a muscle, Ghafa had a rough grip on his dominant hand and a gleaming knife to his throat.

"Lead me to your prisoners or I'll paint these decks with your blood."

The captain sputtered, beginning to call for aid. Inej shifted her hand on his wrist to bring the smaller blade between her fingers to his lips, jerking his arm harshly with it and earning a gentle grunt.

"I will find them either way," she hissed, reminding both him and herself of her capability "So you may as well prolong your worthless life and speed along the process."

"O-ok-kay," he stammered, hardly daring to raise his voice above a breath.

Inej nodded for Specht to follow her and left her crew on the deck to make sure nobody else did.

 

The ship was much larger than her own, so it took an annoyingly long time to find her way throughout the winding hallways when the captain grew too fearful to instruct her. Eventually, they found their way to the galley.

"There are no prisoners in here," she observed.

"There is one." replied the captain.

He swung the door closed behind him.

Inej gaped in horror for only the barest second before flinging Sankt Petyr between the door and wall, stopping the door from closing. A gunshot and a dull thud sounded on the other side, and when Inej flung the galley door open again, Specht was putting away his pistol and stepping over the captain's corpse.

"Sure he's dead?" she inquired.

"Dying." replied the sailor.

Inej knelt down and patted the corpse for any firearms he could shoot at them with before his heart stopped.

"No threat," she concluded. "Let's move."

The pair pried open a heavy door to the ship's hull and found seven girls and a particularly fragile looking boy, all looking quite beaten up and huddled together under a single fraying blanket with quaking limbs and fearful eyes. Rage swelled in Inej at their condition, hot and primal. The audacity of the bastards!

"Is there anyone else here?" she asked as gently as she could manage, in Kerch and Ravkan, hoping they understood. "I am Captain Inej Ghafa of the Wraith, we are here to save you."

One girl with a black eye and mangy blonde hair perked up at the Ravkan translation and began yelling happily to the others in cracking Fjerdan. One by one, they all got to their feet, leaning on each other for balance on shaky legs. A vague sense of something hopeful bloomed in their expressions.

"Thank you," the blonde girl rasped in messy Ravkan. "We have been down here for months. I had thought we were to die."

Something sad and ancient twinged in Inej's heart.

"How long has it been since you've all eaten?" Inej asked, noting their sticklike frames and hazy views, so familiar.

"Weeks? I do not know." the girl responded, voice cracking.  
Inej put an arm around her shoulders. 

"No matter. You will all eat again very soon."

The girl smiled brightly through dry, bloody lips.

Up on the deck, most of the ship's crew were either tied up with bitter looks on their faces or engaged in fistfights with Inej's own.

"Move out!" she called, and her own sailors obediently began to climb back onto the Wraith. That feeling of power giving a command and actually having it be fulfilled would never grow old. When everyone was back on the deck, she sprang back across the rope and cut it, leaving a six-foot path of rope hanging from the Amaryllis' rail. Inej nodded to the sailors manning the cannons, and a shot was fired not to the hull but to the mast. It tumbled to the sea below in flames, casting a cloud of steam into the rainy air.

They'd live, but it would take them a while to get anywhere.

Hopefully, lack of supplies would teach them their lesson.

 

After leading the hostages to the galley for a warm meal, Inej retired to her cabin to dry off before meeting them again. As far as captain's cabins went, she fancied hers modest. Furnished quite ordinarily, the only things that set it apart from the rest of the crew's cabins were the great desk laden with maps, research, and navigation materials and the traditional Suli tapestries and prayer book adorning respectively her walls and bedside table.  
Inej watched the pouring rain through her porthole window, so rapid it blurred any view of the sea or sky like fog in its own right. She listened to its pounding on the decks above as she stretched out her muscles and donned fresh trousers and a warmer coat. A brief knock came to her door as the captain was re braiding her hair.

"Come in."

It was Meera, a younger sailor she'd enlisted from the Crow Club staff who mostly stuck to manning cannons and relaying information.

"We should be intersecting with the post ship's course within hours." she announced.

"Is that all?" asked Inej, willing herself not to begin jumping for joy in front of a subordinate.

Meera nodded "Yes, Captain,"

Inej thanked her and followed her out of the room, locking the heavy cabin door as she went on her way to the galley.

"My sisters and I were taken just off the coast on a vacation with our grandparents on the outer islands this summer," the blonde girl explained two hours, five steamed buns, and a bowl of soup later, still tripping over pronunciation in unsteady Ravkan.

"We were blindfolded and taken aboard a smaller ship for a month, then brought to that big one where we met the others."

"Do you know where the others are all from?" Inej inquired.

The girl shook her head slowly.

"Could you ask them?"

"Yes," she said "Most know Fjerdan and there is one who can translate to Shu."

"That would be wonderful." replied Inej. "Ask them whenever you're ready, I'd like to bring you home as soon as I can."

"Captain!" exclaimed Specht, darting into the galley, breathless. "We're nearing the mail ship!"

Inej urged the wild fluttering in her guts to quell, with little success. She turned to the girl and offered an approximation of a polite bow.

"I must go," she said, hoping her voice didn't betray her excitement "I will see you again briefly."

"Of course. Thank you captain Ghafa," the girl responded.

Inej turned and all but sprinted out of the room. 

 

"Captain Pikshoon!"

"Yes?"

"We are scheduled to arrive at the Ketterdam docks at nine bells this evening."

"Excellent. Anything else to report?"

"Well, we haven't lost any mail, but we appear to have five more letters than what we counted when we started out. Two to Ravka, three to Kerch."

The captain glanced up from his documents.

"Probably just an error in the starting numbers," he drawled. "Fix the report and leave it be."

"Yes Captain."


End file.
